


there's blood on my hands, I can taste it

by darlingargents



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Cunnilingus, Dream Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24193963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: Vader knows what it looks like when someone is on the verge of death. He’s seen it over and over. It has always meant a job well done.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano/Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 12
Kudos: 168
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	there's blood on my hands, I can taste it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



> Title from Nowhere/Bloodlines Pt. I by Sir Sly. Thank you to S for the beta!

The temple closes.

The light surrounds them, and there she is, Ahsoka, who Vader always hoped he would never see again, because he knew this moment was coming. She drops her lightsabers and looks at him, into his eyes, and says, “I’m not leaving you. Not this time.”

He wants, more than anything, to put down his weapon.

He can’t.

✪✪✪

Her mouth is open in an O, looking down at her stomach, the wound through the centre. Vader is looking at the cauterized wound as well. He feels dangerously close to collapsing, and it’s not just because she hurt him, too.

“Anakin,” she says, choking on a sob, and collapses to her knees. “Anakin, please.” She’s sobbing, hands clutching her abdomen. Vader knows what it looks like when someone is on the verge of death. He’s seen it over and over. It has always meant a job well done.

Watching her die is not an option. His mind is made up before he can think it through. He moves towards her, and she flinches away before he kneels, his mechanical body creaking as he does.

Vader places a black-gloved hand on the wound, and pulls on the last remnants of the Force that he has, forcing life back into her body. Her eyes roll back into her head and she collapses; he wraps an arm around her back before she can hit the temple floor.

There’s enough life-energy in her to get out. Adjusting his grip, an arm under her knees and one under her back, Vader gets to his feet, and begins the slow walk to his TIE fighter.

There are no medical supplies onboard, of course. Vader doesn’t need them; there’s no reason to have any. He adjusts her still-unconscious body carefully, laying her out like a corpse on the floor. She’s still alive, still breathing, and he focuses on that as he makes his way out.

Still breathing. It’s not too late.

✪✪✪

When he makes it to Mustafar, his droids immediately swarm him. He ignores their worried queries on his efficiency and injuries, and moves through them, going straight for the medical bay. Her breathing is shallower when he gets there and lays her out on the table, letting the medical droid scan her. The Dark side of the Force is heavy here, he knows; it’s never been important to him before, in any real way, but it might be hurting her.

The medical droid is slowly cutting away her clothes, and Vader pushes it aside and rips them open in short, jerky motions, letting them fall to the floor. He can’t remember the last time he saw her like this. On a mission somewhere, when they stripped down to bathe in a river? Sharing a tent during long occupations?

It feels different, now. She has scars with stories he’ll never know. There’s wiry muscle and ribs he can count, from all those years on the run.

The medical droid finishes its scan. “Surgery,” it says. “Leave, Lord Vader.” It’s not a question. Vader retreats to the corner, and watches. His own wounds can wait.

The surgery is brief, suturing and reopening the cauterized wounds to let them heal. Blood gushes down onto the table, and Vader stares at it. This was him. He caused it.

It’s different, somehow, than the lightsaber. Almost more intimate.

When the surgery is done, the droid wraps the wounds loosely and lifts her into the bacta tank. Vader watches as she’s carefully arranged, the breathing apparatus strapped to her face, and the door closed. The bacta pours in and surrounds her.

“She will heal,” the droid says. “Do you need medical care, Lord Vader?”

“Yes,” he says, and allows himself to be fixed up. If it means he can stay here with her for just a little longer, he’ll take it.

✪✪✪

It takes her three days to wake up. Vader sleeps briefly and comes back as soon as he can. He can’t stop looking at her, at her face. He hasn’t let himself dream of her for years. It had been a temptation, something he couldn’t have.

She was always beautiful, but she is much more than that now. Weathered and scarred and still breathing despite everything. Despite Vader’s own orders, the fact that he should be killing her now instead of letting her heal.

In a fit of sentimentality, he places his mechanical hand on the glass. It’s warm. Ahsoka has always run hot; Togruta are warmer than humans.

He takes his hand away, and leaves. The receptors in his mechanical palm stay warm longer than he expected.

✪✪✪

On the third day, her wounds are healed, and she starts showing signs of life. Vader is there to watch as the droids move her to a bed, clean the bacta off her body, dress her in spare robes. As she sleeps in the bed, Vader sits beside it, watching her. Knowing that she’s safe comforts him, somehow, and it’s a feeling he hasn’t had in so long that he hardly recognizes it. He reaches out to brush his fingers across her cheek, and her eyelids flutter.

He realizes, as she blinks, that he hasn’t thought once about what he is going to say to her.

“Anakin,” she says, and reaches up a shaking hand to touch his mask. “You saved me.”

He doesn’t dignify that with a response. He always would have.

“You’re free to go when you have healed,” he says, and within a blink, Ahsoka goes from confused and delirious to shocked. She tries to sit up, and winces at the residual weakness and pain in her body.

“Lie down,” Vader says, and she does. “You are not fully recovered yet.”

“You tried to kill me,” she says, softly. Vader has to look away from the look in her eyes.

“Never again,” he promises. “Not ever.”

He stands, and she watches as he leaves her in the medical bay, alone.

✪✪✪

The droids provide her with food and entertainment and comfort while her injuries fully heal. There’s a camera in the room, and she’s fully aware of it. Vader watches her stretch and do push-ups, making sure her muscles heal the right way. It’s always a risk that they won’t, that they’ll atrophy into nothing. Ahsoka would never let that happen.

When she sleeps, he allows himself to watch her, and tries not to think about going in there, touching her again. He’s missed touch, he thinks. It’s surprising. Sith don’t care, don’t need other beings for anything at all. But he aches for her.

It’s something to consider.

✪✪✪

She finds him in a dream, a week after their arrival on Mustafar. The dream is in their old ship, somewhere in hyperspace, and Vader is his old self again, unencumbered by the suit. Ahsoka, looking the same as she did when she fell asleep, is watching him from the copilot’s seat.

“Your walls are strong,” she says admiringly. “It took me a while to batter them down.”

Vader inclines a head at her. If anyone could do it, she could. She knows his mind better than anyone save Obi-Wan, and she has the advantage of proximity and being on Vader’s mind at all times.

“Yours are too,” he says. “I taught you well.”

“They aren’t closed to you,” she says. “They never have been.” She stands, and crosses the small space between them, straddling Vader in his pilot’s seat. His hands settle on her hips out of instinct.

Vader wants to ask her what this is, but she answers the unspoken question with a kiss. Her mouth is warm, soft against his; the points of her teeth brush his tongue as she deepens the kiss. Her fingers twine into his hair and he feels his grip on her hips tighten against his will, pulling her closer. Closer.

It has been a long time coming.

They kiss for a long time, moving and stumbling around the cabin until Vader notices they’re on a bed, Ahsoka on top and straddling him. He kisses her wrists as she wills away their clothing, leaving them bare. He runs his hands across her breasts, her sides, her arms, the sharp bones of her hips. All the parts of her that he wants to memorize.

It doesn’t take long for him to get tired of the foreplay; he’s never been as patient as he’s supposed to be. He flips her over and kisses his way down her body, her collarbone, her breasts, her ribcage and belly, and down between her legs. She reaches down and blindly takes his hand as he loses himself in the taste of her, the smell, the feeling of her thighs tightening around his head, the noises she makes when she gets close.

It’s new, but it’s still Ahsoka. It feels like coming home.

She squeezes his hand tight as she comes, letting out a gasp, her thighs trembling. He lifts his head and she pulls him into a kiss. They don’t speak again for a very long time, the dream stretching on and on around them.

At some point, he feels the ridges of an injury on her stomach, and remembers what she looked like when the lightsaber went through her. He freezes, and she takes his face in both hands. “Don’t,” she whispers, and pulls him closer again. “Not now.”

It keeps going, until they both wake up.

✪✪✪

She’s recovered enough to leave. He knows that. He knows, when he wakes up, that she is going to.

It’s a half-hearted escape. She finds her lightsabers and spare clothing, and uses them to cut through the barriers keeping her from the spaceport. There’s a handful of small, well-equipped ships. She takes her pick and is on her way.

Vader watches the whole thing on the cameras, and when her ship winks away into hyperspace, he finally turns away.

Next time they meet, he knows, it will be different. How it will change, he won’t know until it happens.

Until then, he’s content to pretend she was never here. Nothing left but the faintest feelings in his chest, that he never thought he would have again.


End file.
